Who doesn’t know this: You just want to register for an online account, but before that there’s a Captcha query alá Mark all pictures with a bus
In the way. This is to ensure that a human is logging in and not a bot. However, if you are convinced that you have selected the right images and still have to repeat the test, it quickly becomes annoying.
New queries from the company hCaptcha could even lead to solving the problem becoming a guessing game in the future. According to their own statements, at least 15 percent of the Internet relies on solutions from this provider. The biggest competitor in this area is reCAPTCHA, which was bought by Google in 2009. In addition to distinguishing between humans and machines, captchas are also used to train AIs.
The abbreviation Captcha
stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
However, AI can not only convincingly succeed in imitating people, but also create images that look like art. We find this particularly exciting when it happens using the example of famous computer games, as you can see in the following article:
Midjourney AI
AI crosses famous games and famous painters
What new Captcha queries are we talking about?
Like Tech Magazine Wired reported that the well-known Captcha queries for traffic lights, boats and pedestrian crossings in hCaptcha are partially replaced by new, much more unusual queries. For example, one of them asks you to identify smiling dogs:
link to Twitter content
This quickly leads to question marks: Does that mean just all dogs with an open mouth? Can a dog smile with its mouth closed? And do dogs even smile?
According to hCaptcha, what potentially proves to be a complication of the Captcha process and, in the worst case, prevents account access, is actually intended for better entertainment. Here’s what Eli-Shaoul Khedouri – CEO of Intution Games, the company behind hCaptcha – tells Wired:
We don’t want to bore you to death. We wish that the much more [Captcha-]experience is pleasant […].
In order to achieve this, hCaptcha deliberately goes outside the usual range, and what could be more obvious than animals? After all, the internet is mainly used to send pictures of animals, says Khedouri. The following Captcha variant fits the picture only too well:
link to Twitter content
The future of captchas remains uncertain
The above examples are probably just initial tests. Also, the basic idea of improving the Captcha experience is quite welcome. However, hCaptcha does not seem to have found the right way yet.
Apple, on the other hand, wants to take a completely different approach. As announced at the WWDC 2022 developer conference, manual entries for captchas with the new versions of their own operating systems (iOS & iPadOS 16 and macOS 13) should be eliminated as far as possible and carried out Private Access Tokens
be replaced.
With regard to accessibility, an automated process as a Captcha alternative would be a helpful solution. It remains to be seen whether this can be implemented as planned by Apple without major problems and if so, when and in what form it will also come to pass on Apple devices. On the other hand, a welcome update for Whatsapp is already very concrete. Read more about it here:
WhatsApp: Major update makes it easier to make yourself invisible
What do you think of the new examples for captchas? A welcome change, even more annoying than the usual tests you already know, or something in between? Feel free to write it in the comments!
